


Emerging

by Roca



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-16
Updated: 2015-02-08
Packaged: 2018-03-01 19:53:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2785670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Roca/pseuds/Roca
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Should he tell her of his mission, of the Slayer he had been sent to guide before a strange twist of fate had sent her packing off to Cleveland with another Watcher before he had even laid eyes on her? Should he share his fear of what would happen to this place without a Slayer to maintain order? Should he confess how scared he was to stand alone and try to take her place?<br/>And as she looked at him steadily, waiting for his words, Giles realized that there was another option - that maybe, just maybe, he wouldn't have to stand alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

  * For [enigmaticagentscully](https://archiveofourown.org/users/enigmaticagentscully/gifts).



> This takes place just about a month after Buffy first arrived in Sunnydale in the regular 'verse - but here Giles already knows that she's not coming, and has decided to take things into his own hands. This time, an inept not-quite-Watcher, a technopagan, a couple of regular kids, and a neutered vampire have to take on The Master alone.

                The graveyard was as still as the death that had not quite blessed all of its occupants, Rupert Giles reflected as he settled himself against an obelisk (pointing like an accusing finger at the sky, as if blaming the heavens for the unrest that plagued those who should have been mercifully departed) to wait. Despite the fact that it was well into April – and that he was, after all, in California – there was a slight chill in the air that caused him to shiver slightly as he glanced around the cemetery before focusing once more upon the tombstone in front of him. The sod in front of this particular stone had not yet become part of the earth, and was instead still draped like an absurd doormat of grass over the ground in which the newest addition to the cemetery had been buried earlier that day. The stone, which was also new, had “SMITH” chiseled onto it in somber thick letters – the name that matched the victim he had spotted in yesterday’s obituaries that had apparently died of “strange neck ruptures.”

                He had, of course, understood immediately what was necessary to do. After all, hadn’t he been trained to do this (or watch a young girl do this from a safe distance, but that wasn’t an option now) for years?

                Still, he could not keep his fingers from twitching nervously on the handle of his stake as he stared at the freshly turned earth. He hadn’t fought a demon face-to-face in ages, much less a vampire, and it seemed as if the minutes were stretching longer and tauter the more he waited with his eyes locked on the place where the beast would soon emerge.

                In fact, he was so absorbed with looking out for it that he didn’t hear the approaching footsteps of the other vampire that had been lurking in the graveyard until it grabbed him from behind and threw him heavily to the ground. Though the impact stunned him for a moment, the adrenaline that immediately spiked through him had him scrambling to his knees in another instant, though he was quickly forced back to the ground when the vicious creature threw itself upon him and pinned him there. Its weight was great enough to have him truly trapped, and he could do nothing but wriggle helplessly in the least dignified way imaginable. But when the vampire shifted just slightly in order to get at his neck, he seized the opportunity and managed to jerk his knee up and hit the vampire hard in the jaw.

                As the thing reared back and yelled in pain (good lord, he hadn’t expected its face to look quite so alien - he felt another wave of fear wash over him at the sight of it), he managed to pull away completely, only to promptly crash into a tombstone, tumble over it, and land directly in front of the newly-risen vampire he had come to dispose of in the first place.

                Bloody Hell.

                The two of them regarded each other for a moment, both quite surprised by the appearance of the other. But the momentary truce was quickly shattered when the vampire that Giles had been fighting earlier charged over, snarling. Knowing that fighting the two of them together was hopeless and foolhardy, Giles had no choice but to flee – which he did at once.

                The two vampires followed right after him, united in the pursuit of their prey. They were both much swifter and stronger than he, and he knew that they would be upon him within moments. Legs burning, Giles poured on more speed and dashed for the road at the edge of the cemetery. Even as he ran, his heart was sinking as he realized that he would not have time to unlock its doors before they caught him and – No, he wouldn’t let himself think any further. Running was his only hope.

                He vaulted over the short stone wall in one motion and skidded into a landing on the other side before taking off again. His pursuers took a bit longer to haul themselves over, and he thanked every deity he knew of for the extra few seconds it bought him as he reached his Citroen and fumbled desperately in his pocket for his keys – a bit too desperately, because they slipped from between his fingers and landed in the thick grass by the curb.

                Horrified, he dropped to his knees to search for them, but it was well past midnight, and the nearest streetlight was too far away to be of much use. The only thing it succeeded in doing was showing him that the vampires were right there, their faces warped into the bestial visage of their true selves. Their eyes burned with a savage hunger - though they quickly filled with surprise and anger as a pair of headlights suddenly swept around the corner and blinded them. They both let out snarls and halted, shielding their eyes.

                As Giles watched in dumbstruck amazement, the car pulled right up to where he was standing and screeched to a halt. Through its open window a voice – somehow familiar – called, “Get in! Quick!” Giles snapped into action and dove for the door handle as the vampires behind him fought of their confusion and lunged after him once more. But they were too late – within seconds, he was slamming the door closed as they peeled out as fast as the car would take them. The new vampire made the mistake of jumping in front of the vehicle – perhaps overestimating his new invulnerability – and the driver of the vehicle let out a yelp as they swerved wildly around him.

                “What the hell is wrong with their faces?” she gasped as they tore through the cemetary’s gates. She turned to face him, her dark eyes as round as the moon and her hands clutching the steering wheel so tightly that her knuckles were white.

               And as he peered through the dimness of the car’s interior, Giles found himself face to face with Sunnydale High’s Computer Science teacher, Ms. Calendar.


	2. Circumstance

Giles could only stare at her wordlessly for a moment as he scrambled to regain his breath and wits. “Thank you,” he gasped eventually, reaching over his shoulder to tug down his seatbelt with trembling hands. “Without you, I might’ve…”

Ms. Calendar took her eyes off the road briefly to shoot him a measuring look. “I’d tell you not to worry about it, but that wouldn’t exactly be good advice. What were you doing out there? Who were those guys?”

“I, erm…” Giles struggled to find a suitable explanation for what she had just witnessed, but none of the excuses he tried in his head sounded even remotely believable. “They were - that is - perhaps I could explain later?”

“I don’t think so, mister,” she told him sharply. “From what I can tell, I just saved your skin. You sort of owe me an explanation.” The glare she gave him brooked no argument, and he slumped down in his seat in resignation.

“Very well, then,” he sighed. “Would you mind taking me to my house? We could talk there.”

Ms. Calendar nodded cautiously. “Okay, but what about the police? Should we call them or something?”

“No!” Giles said hastily, and then lowered his voice at the incredulous look on her face. “I’m afraid this isn’t the sort of circumstance in which the police would be of any help.” And, though she still looked as if she didn’t entirely believe him, she allowed him to direct her to his apartment.

Once there, Giles clambered from the car, grabbed Ms. Calendar’s elbow, and escorted her to the door as quickly as possible. “What’s the rush?” she asked him, attempting to sound casual, but he could see how nervous his rather desperate demeanor had made her.

“In case we were followed,” he told her shortly, rooting around under his doormat for the spare key (his key ring, to the best of his knowledge, was still lying in the grass at the cemetery).

“Followed?” she asked skeptically, but he ignored her as he lunged to unlock the door and swiftly pulled her inside. “Rupert, what’s going on?”

“How do you know my name?” he asked, startled from his state of worry by her unexpected use of it. “I mean, I’m aware that we work together, but we’ve never exactly been on first-name basis.”

“Yeah, we weren’t,” she said, suddenly smug. “Remember that staff meeting your first week here, when Flutie was talking about installing that new computerized indexing system in the library?”

“I seem to recall that we did a fair amount of arguing,” Giles confessed, a trifle embarrassed. “But still, no first names.”

“I looked yours up in the staff database afterward.” The smile she gave him was as self-satisfied as a cat that with a bowl of cream. “I knew it would get under your skin if I called you that.”

“Ah. Well then.” Noting for the first time how dirty his glasses had become during his flight from the vampires, he pulled them off of his face and began to polish them furiously.

“Well, I’d say that it worked.” The grin dropped from her face as her gaze once again turned serious. “But enough about that. Come on, Rupert. What’s going on?”

“I - I’m not really sure how to tell you this,” he began, pushing a hand through his tousled hair. “Why don’t you sit down.”

“Oooo-kay,” Ms. Calendar said uncertainly, and plopped herself down on his couch, looking at him expectantly.

“Now, this may be a bit of a shock to you, but…” He took a deep breath, wondering if he was doing the right thing by telling her. But… She had saved his life that night, and it would be terribly unfair to thank her by sending her into the demonic chaos of Sunnydale without any inkling of the true dangers the town held. So, gritting his teeth, he forced himself to continue. “You’ve been told since you were a child that the monsters under your bed are make-believe, that demons and magic aren’t real. I’m sorry, but that’s not true.” He looked up and found an unreadable expression on her face. “They’re real.”

There was an uncomfortable beat of silence as the two of them stared at each other. “Well then...” Jenny said at last, looking inexplicably close to laughing aloud. Giles sighed. He should have known that she wouldn’t believe him at first. How to convince her?

“Ms. Calendar, I know that this is hard to accept, but -”

“Relax, Rupert,” Jenny said, rolling her eyes good-naturedly. “I already know.”

“What?” He gaped at her in complete bafflement. “How could you possibly - you already know?”

“Yep.” She shrugged, looking almost amused by his disbelief. “All that stuff you said about always being told that monsters weren’t real? Actually, my family has been warning me about demons and magic since I was old enough to say ‘abracadabra.’” Her eyes widened suddenly. “Oh my god. So those things back there, in the graveyard? They were vampires?” She shuddered. “I haven’t actually seen one before. Wow.”

“Yes, they were,” Giles replied, still reeling from her revelation. “I hope you can forgive my surprise - I suppose I didn’t expect to meet anyone else here that knew.”

“Not many do, exactly.” She laid a reassuring hand on his arm, as if to make him feel better about not being the only one in on the secret. “But the weekly body count here is high enough that most people know that something isn’t quite right about this place.”

“So you know about the Hellmouth as well?”

Ms. Calendar gave him a strange look. “No. The Hell-what? That sounds bad, whatever it is.”

“‘Bad’ is a fairly accurate description,” Giles agreed, actually sounding a bit relieved that he had some new information to tell her. “A Hellmouth is where the barriers between dimensions are weak - that is, it’s the closest place to hell on earth. It’s a powerful source of mystical energy - it attracts all kinds of demons.”

Jenny nodded slowly. “That kind of makes sense. It explains why the bones I’ve been casting have been all over the place since I’ve moved here. Maybe it’s also why…” She paused, biting her lip, and Giles looked at her curiously.

“Why what?” She didn’t say anything, staring down at her knees to keep from meeting his eyes. “Jenny,” Giles said quietly, a sinking feeling settling in his chest, “Why did you come here?”

When she looked back up at him, there was a challenge in her gaze. “You first.”

“What?” Giles asked, caught off-guard.

“You know what I mean,” she told him firmly. “We’re both new to this town, and we both know what this world is really like, but you’re the one who knew exactly what he was getting into when he came here. So why did you come?”

Regarding her carefully, Rupert Giles realized that he once again had an important decision to make. Should he tell her of his mission, of the Slayer he had been sent to guide before a strange twist of fate had sent her packing off with another Watcher before he had even laid eyes on her? Should he share his fear of what would happen to this place without a Slayer to maintain order? Should he confess how scared he was to stand alone and try to take her place?

And as she looked at him steadily, waiting for his words, Giles realized that there was another option - that maybe, just maybe, he wouldn’t have to face everything alone.

Taking a deep breath, he let it out in a single long sigh. “Let me get us something to drink,” he told her, rising to fetch a bottle of scotch from the cabinet by the sink. “This may take a while to explain.”


	3. Chapter 3

Jenny’s own story was just as strange and convoluted as his own, it turned out.

Before she shared it, she’d confessed that she really wasn’t supposed to tell anyone – but after hearing everything that he had dealt with, her own secret didn’t seem quite as important.

They both shared a duty to watch, presented to them by families that intended the work to be an honor without acknowledging that it could also very well be a death sentence. He was sure that the similarity had occurred to her as well, but neither of them mentioned anything about it as she finally concluded her story. It had taken more than an hour for them both to finish, and Giles found himself staring at the now half-empty bottle of alcohol on the table (Jenny had claimed to be more of a wine person, but accepted some scotch as the night wore on) in exhaustion as he processed everything that had been said.

“So there’s really a vampire with a soul wandering around town this very moment?” he asked, closing his eyes in weary disbelief.

“Yep,” Jenny sighed. “And there’s also a Vampire Slayer that’s supposed to be here but instead bailed for… Cincinnati?”

“Cleveland.” Giles corrected her. “And yes, I’m afraid that’s true.”

“And she went there instead of coming to help us at the _mouth of hell_?”

                Giles looked away. “Yes.”

                “Well, is there anything you can do to get that decision repealed or something?” There was desperation in her voice, and pleading, but it still took all of Giles’ willpower not to snap at her that _of course_ he’d tried to bring her back and _of course_ he’d done everything he could, but there was nothing more to be done about it.

                “No,” he said instead, and there was enough cold fury in his voice to silence her for a moment.

                “Hey, I’m sorry if that’s a touchy subject,” she said at last, “but I think I kind of have a right to know, seeing as how I just found out that I’ve been living on a Hellmouth.”

                “Of course,” Giles said, appropriately abashed. “I’m sorry, I just…” He clasped his hands together and stared helplessly at the ground. “Tonight was my first attempt at patrolling, and you saw how that ended. How can I even hope to be of any help when I can’t even fight a single vampire?”

                “Hey,” Jenny said, laying a gentle hand on his shoulder. “Who even says that this is your responsibility?” His head snapped up and he regarded her with empty eyes as she continued. “You were sent here to watch a Slayer, but she’s not here. Why are you? Why don’t you just leave? You don’t owe this place anything.”

                He looked directly at her, green eyes piercing, and she met his gaze resolutely, despite growing a little red with something that wasn’t quite shame. “Would you leave?” he asked her quietly.

                “If I’d have known it would be like this, I would never have come,” she told him stubbornly. He continued to look at her, just look, and she eventually dropped her gaze down into her lap. “But I wouldn’t leave. I mean, I won’t.”

                “When I was working at the high school, waiting for the Slayer to arrive, I realized that I couldn’t abandon these people, even if she never appeared.”

                “They’re just kids.” Jenny shook her head, as if just realizing the fact. “Everyone in all my classes, every student in the hall – they have no idea what they’re in for, living here.” She lapsed into a brief silence, and when she spoke again, her voice was urgent. “Rupert, if the Slayer never comes, what’s going to happen to them?”

                And, as much as he wanted to tell her bold, simple lies, tell her that nothing would happen, that they would all make it somehow, she deserved better than that. “I don’t know,” he said, and it was thin and hopeless, but it was the truth.

                There wasn’t much more to be said after that, so they planned an awkward little car roulette (Jenny would go home and pick him up in the morning to retrieve his Citroen from the cemetery) and Jenny departed.

                Glimpsing her in the hallways the next day felt strange, as if the events of the night before had been some strange sort of dream. But his chest felt lighter, somehow, from sharing his deep secret with somebody else, and the soft, solemn look she gave him as she walked past made him certain that everything really had happened.

                It had wound up being a very late night, and Giles wandered through the day in a dozy daze, mucking through paperwork from the Council and reorganizing the card catalog with a deep desire to go home and rest his only coherent thought. His plan was thwarted, however, by the arrival of the soft-spoken redheaded girl and her rather idiotic friend soon after the last bell of the day rang.

                “Hi Mr. Giles,” she told him, flashing him a shy smile. “Xander and I are going to do some studying, okay?”  
                “Erm, what?” he asked weakly, slumping against the doorframe. “You’re going to… stay?”

                “Uh-huh. You told me last week that it’d be okay if we came in after school to study.” Hey eyes suddenly widened. “That’s okay, isn’t it?”

                “Ah. Yes. Very good.” With a quiet groan, he padded back to his office and flopped bonelessly into his chair. He had, in fact, promised the girl that she could use the library as an after-hours study location, but had quite forgotten the fact in his great desire to go home. If it had been any other student, he would have sent them packing, but Willow was different. She was the only student that had treated him with genuine kindness since his arrival (and, in fact, the only student who didn’t treat the library like the influenza ward of the hospital in 1918). For that, he was willing to linger long after her would have preferred and to even tolerate the presence of her friend, who seemed more interested in sticking pencils into various orifices than he was with his homework.

                It was in in this position Jenny found them in when she entered the library: Willow leaning intently over her math book, Xander picking at a spot on his hand, and Giles half-asleep in his office. “Willow, Xander?” he heard her say, and the sound of her voice pulled him out of his doze. “What are you doing here so late?”

                “Oh! Hi, Ms. Calendar!” Willow looked up from the textbook to beam up at her. “We’re just studying. Why are you here?” she asked, brow wrinkling.

                “I just came to ask Mr. Giles a few questions,” she said easily. “Do you know if he’s here?”

                “In my office,” he called, not bothering to heave himself out of his chair.

                With a friendly nod at the two kids, Jenny moved over to Giles, closing the door to his office behind her. After double-checking that Willow and Xander weren’t eavesdropping behind them, she turned to him and said in a low voice, “So.”

                Giles would have dearly loved to have replied with another “so” in return, but found he was too tired to muster up the sarcasm necessary to perform the maneuver. Instead he inclined his head slightly against the back of his chair and said, “Yes?”

                “So,” she said impatiently, “what are we going to do?”

                “Going to do?” Giles asked, taken aback by her bluntness. “What do you mean?”

                “What are we going to do about _this_?” she demanded. “About what we talked about. About the… Hellmouth. And vampires. And monsters.” Closing her eyes, she dropped her face into her hands for a moment. “God, this still doesn’t feel real.”

                “Unfortunately,” he sighed, “it is. Though I still don’t understand what you’re talking about. What is it that you expect to do?”

                “I don’t know! Something.” She looked up at him with fire in her eyes. “Evacuate the town. Warn everybody. Get the Slayer back here where she belongs.”  
                “I wish it were that simple!” Giles found his exhaustion dropping away in the face of the frustration rising up within him. “Do you think I haven’t thought of doing those things? We can’t tell anyone because they’d lock us up in bloody Bedlam. And the Slayer? _She isn’t coming._ ”

                “I don’t believe you,” Jenny hissed. “How can you just give up? We’re the only ones who can do anything. None of them even know that they’re living on a goddamn _Hellmouth_.”  The last part was shouted so loudly that both Willow and Xander looked up from their book, and Jenny’s mouth snapped shut at the frantic shushing gesture Giles made at her.

                “I’m sorry, Jenny,” he said in a whisper, his eyes beseeching. “I didn’t mean to be so…”

                “Bitchy?” Jenny suggested.

                Rolling his eyes (but at the same time suppressing a small smile), he nodded. “Yes, ‘bitchy.’ It’s just… I feel the same way. I want to help too – it’s the whole reason I stayed after learning that the Slayer wasn’t coming. But I’m not sure what the two of us can achieve against all the evil forces at work in this town.”

                “Hey,” Jenny said softly. . “I’m sorry, too. For shouting. But you can’t think that way. We just need a plant, okay?” At his weary nod, she set a comforting hand on his shoulder. “So what have you been doing so far?”

                “Not much,” he admitted. “I search for suspicious obituaries in the paper – neck wounds, bite marks, and the like – then try to visit the cemetery to stop them from rising as vampires.”

                “Okay.” Jenny smiled at him encouragingly. “And how many have you caught so far?”

                Refusing to meet her gaze, he focused on the empty mug on his desk as he replied: “None.”

                Jenny seemed to visibly deflate, but she quickly pulled herself together. “Okay. That’s okay. We’ll just have to work this together.”

                “Wait just a minute,” Giles said, bolting upright in his seat. “You can’t mean that you’ll be going out and…!”

                “Fighting? That’s exactly what I mean.” If looks could kill, Giles himself would be little more than a smoldering heap of ashes at that point.  “Rupert, we aren’t going to get anything done if you keep me locked up all safe and tight while you’re the only one risking your neck. We need to do this together.”

                He opened his mouth to protest, to beg her to reconsider, to outright refuse – but something made him abruptly shut it again. Perhaps it was the set of her shoulders that so clearly brooked no argument, or else the way her fingers had curled into fists around the edges of her words. Most of all, it was the look in her eyes. They didn’t hold bravery, exactly. He could see the fear there, the pure terror at what she was forcing herself to say and the idea of having to follow through. But the fear was shoved aside by the ferocity of the determination that seemed to emanate off of her in waves.

                Looking her over, he couldn’t help but think how slight she was, how soft and vulnerable and beautiful. (The last thought startled him, just a bit, but he quickly tucked it away. Now was not the time.) But somehow she was also swift and sharp, a whiplash and biting blade. She was, he realized, somebody he could trust to handle herself.

 It wasn’t as if he had much of a choice, anyway.

“Alright,” he said at last, shaking his head in defeat. “I suppose you’re right.”

“I wasn’t asking your permission,” she was quick to tell him, but the smile on her face showed that he didn’t mind having his approval either. “Come on, Rupert. Let’s get to work.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Literally SO MANY PROBLEMS would have been solved if Jenny had just told them about her history and family in the first place, and I couldn't really think of a reason why she would hide it so long in the first place, especially in this universe. So yay for no secrets?


End file.
